Learning to See

In this interview, Neslon Shanks describes how, at his art school, he teaches his students to see nature. Learning to see can be difficult, and is a prerequisite to being able to draw and paint realistically.

 Many people assume that artistic skill rests primarily on hand-eye coordination and that all people with functioning eyes see things more or less the same Why, they might ask, should I be taught to see?

Biologist Jacob Johann von Uexküll discovered that animals with eyes cannot see in their surroundings much of what is visible. The jackdaw, for example, can only see a grasshopper, it is favourite food, when the grasshopper is in flight, but not when it sits motionless on a leaf in front of it. Uexküll’s discovery supports philosopher Henri Bergson’s belief that evolution has adapted our perception toward our survival but not toward seeing nature. Our perception is selective according to what we need and want. 

Rarely do we stop to look at something for any length of time. Learning to see involves frustrating our evolutionary desires and tricking our eyes to see beyond our normal limitations. But more than anything taking a long time to look at a scene quiets the mind and opens our eyes to artistic epiphanies.